India

[Krajzen]

@Yuddhisthira as an expert on the subject what would you think of the proposition below

An alternate solution to several Indian civilizations would be simply to make one Indian civ, give it several leaders in one game, but this time each one heavily changing its abilities, aestethics, city list etc. Yeah I know such thing didnt happen in civ6 to that degree, but you can't certainly exclude such possibility for civ7 as we have already accepted the (very comfortable, especially for modding) concept of occasionally allowing more than one leader per civ. Although I am hesistant towards the idea of "one leader for two civs" as it is really awkward.

So you get "Indian" civ and it eventually has for example (not that impossible as it already had two) four leaders: one from classical Indian empires focused on religion and science, one Chola Tamil guy focused on economy and architecture, one Maratha guy focused on war, and one modern guy maybe not Gandhi representing modern India.

Such solution would avoid a lot of, as it seems, incredibly awkward stuff such as "some classical Indian dynasty separate from India?" "suggestion that Tamils =/= India, politically uncomfortable", overlapping city lists (unavoidable issue) and so on. In fact now that I think of it, it seems to be the most probable solution for Firaxis to choose, seeing how they did it to smaller extent in civ6 and civ4.
The we could use the same approach to represent several very different dynasties of China in one game, as China has that uniwue problem of being incredibly awkward to split while clearly needing more room than say Netherlands

I'd still support separate civs for Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bengal/Bangladesh (Bengal Sultanate with Dhaka capital and mostly/entirely B city list, as a way to de facto add Bangladesh to the game), and maybe Mughals (as they have very unique nature, also not sure if Indians would even enjoy Mughal ruler of Indian civ, plus they could actually have a separate city list mostly focusing on Pakistan and Afganistan and kind of representing those countries and cultures as Pakistan civ is very unlikely).

 

[Yudhisthira]

@Yuddhisthira as an expert on the subject what would you think of the proposition below

Sir, I m no expert, far from it a student with very modest knowledge of Indian history.

Personally I m open to all the interesting ideas here,since tbh I m also very puzzled over this issue. I believe political side is dominant one in civ 6 style game, & to represent India in this regard is very challenging since politically India is a mess & always has been in history. Infact, many believe the story of India is more about society than State. So it's relatively easy to see it socially then in political dimension.

For example, let's take example of Maratha confederacy, now the Marathas were short lived power, It rose in vacuum created by receding power of Mughals, it never enjoyed full-fledged superiority & prestige like Mughals rather it remained for all practical purpose a Maratha country power. Hence,to have a Marathi leader to lead an India civ, which wasn't the case, doesn't look very right to me.I would rather argue for a separate Marathi civ with its origin in late medieval period hence not directly connected to earlier Deccanis power like Chalukyas & Rastrakuta. To separate Marathas from North India, I am majorly referring to differences between Marathi society & North India society, in terms of caste structure & culture which isn't very visible If we limit ourselves to political angle only. But these aspects do become crucial in analyzing the reasons of Maratha's action & reactions in North India.

Regarding the proposition, I m not very sure, It's surely very interesting approach & might be practically more applicable than others. But I remember a Chinese guy here on civfanatics & it was his idea to divide a civilization with very long history along time, since there comes a large difference in a society after very long period. I believe this is easier & doable approach for such case.

 

[Yudhisthira]

also not sure if Indians would even enjoy Mughal ruler of Indian civ

Personally I m fine with both, having Mughal ruler leading India or having separate Mughal civ altogether.

 

[Henri Christophe]

& Nobody bought Vedas to India, It was composed in India only in the region between Indus & Ganga.

I tought the Aryan people already know the Vedas when they come in India subcontinent. How is your personal felling about this matter? The Aryans come from India from somewhere else as Iran or they are endemic from India?

 

[Yudhisthira]

I tought the Aryan people already know the Vedas when they come in India subcontinent.

No, there is near unanimous agreement among scholars that vedas from early stage were composed inside India. Infact the earliest book the 6th Mandala of Rig Veda has relatively eastern location between Saraswati & Ganga. The later mandalas show knowledge of more western areas which is understandable since Rig veda is primarily the book of Puru tribe which was around modern day South Punjab,Haryana,West UP region know later as 'Brahmavarta'.

How is your personal felling about this matter? The Aryans come from India from somewhere else as Iran or they are endemic from India?

No, I don't have any personal feelings regarding this & I don't understand why would I have one over it.
On the other hand, if u r asking about my position on this debate(IE homeland) then I m agnostic about it. I try to follow all major schools with best of my understanding, including the popular one like Yamanaya-Steppe,or Armenian-West Iran origin which is recently gaining currency & supported by David Reich & Krauss of Plank Institute, & Indigenous Aryans popular here in Indian subcontinent. Overall, I m more inclined towards origin south of Caspian, but to me the debate appears still quite open.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

No, there is near unanimous agreement among scholars that vedas from early stage were composed inside India. Infact the earliest book the 6th Mandala of Rig Veda has relatively eastern location between Saraswati & Ganga. The later mandalas show knowledge of more western areas which is understandable since Rig veda is primarily the book of Puru tribe which was around modern day South Punjab,Haryana,West UP region know later as 'Brahmavarta'.

I agree here, though know less about the Vedic histories specifically. Historians from the 18th and 19th centuries were often fixated on the idea of great migrations of people, ancient homelands, etc. It was a part of a science of race that is largely debunked today, but we still tell these stories. What we might see more so than people moving around are cultures and languages moving.

On a very small scale this might mean a "stranger king" - a war band or scholar travels to a far-off land and becomes a ruler, and local people start to follow their customs and identify with them. Suddenly what were twenty Norse in a boat occupying a Slavic city becomes "the Norse founded a city". You can imagine how this might be - even in a peaceful situation, if people are introduced to a new option for how to be, it might provide a way out of older, established hierarchies. "I don't have to obey your laws anymore, I'm a Saxon". This doesn't mean that their DNA has changed, but their identification of what is more powerful or prestigious.

This is easier to see in more recent cases. "Eurasians" in Malaya (i.e. Malaysia, Singapore) were often ethnically local but converts to Christianity and thus identified as "Portuguese." Many "Portuguese" in Southeast Asia were in fact Japanese converts fleeing the Sengoku wars.

Really nomadic empires aside (e.g. the Magyars), most accounts of great migrations are the migration of ideas and not people. And even then, one has to remember the kinds of thinking that produced these narratives. Anything that posits an Altai or Caucasian source that was written in the 1800s is automatically going to be a little suspect.

I see this a lot in accounts of Thai migrations. The place of greatest linguistic diversity in Thai language is the Vietnamese and southern Chinese highlands, which is probably where the language comes from (the people, perhaps, are descendants of the people who were already there). But some crazy theories are out there, from crazy sources. There's the 19th C idea that the Thais somehow migrated en masse from the Altai mountains in Siberia, which has zero basis, or the idea that Thais were the original occupiers of China, which also has zero basis (the alleged evidence is that "Thai" sounds like "Dai" which sounds like "Da", which means "big" in Chinese - a bonkers idea). These theories reflect the desires of (often racist) historians from one to two hundred years ago.

 

[Krajzen]

That Dai theory is awesome in its encapsulation of stupidity inherent to turbo linguist nationalist historiographies; there is no thought small and stupid enough to make it incapable of sustaining the wildest claim imaginable in the context.

Polish variant - Poland ruled half of Europe in antiquity. Thai - Thai people were original Chinese. Indian - Indians invented space travel 3000 years ago. Romanian - Dacia was the greatest civilization ever. And so on.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

And so on indeed. The whole history of the word "Caucasian" is itself a bonkers conspiracy rooted in racist logic. It even goes to the micro-level. Thai theories on the Khmer empire claim that the ancient Khmer are not the ancestors of the modern Khmer, but instead the "Khom" despite... writing in Khmer (Cambodian).

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Should Sikh Empire also be a candidate to India in addition to Gandhi and other Late classical Kings? (AFAIK Ashoka has either Greeks or Macedonian mother maybe? or if he's actually related to Iscandar (Alexander III of Macedonia) )

 

[Patine]

Should Sikh Empire also be a candidate to India in addition to Gandhi and other Late classical Kings? (AFAIK Ashoka has either Greeks or Macedonian mother maybe? or if he's actually related to Iscandar (Alexander III of Macedonia) )

I personally think they should be included.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

From a cringe-inducing perspective of broad cultural groupings, deblobbing is already well underway. And if terms like "the West," "East Asia," and "Indian influence" make you cringe, just consider how, by my reckoning, Western representation has taken up 40.0-47.6% of factions from Civ1 to present.

East Asia has had Chinese, Japanese, and Korean factions since Civ3. Now with the Vietnamese introduced in the NFP, I would say we have reached a balance of representation. With the Khmer in Civ4, and then the Siamese and Indonesian factions in Civ5, efforts to represent Indian influence beyond India have also made progress. (As a bonus, Arabia was not given default inclusion until Civ3.)

To this extent, I have not given enough credit to deblobbing. Then again, it is hard to accept Indonesian representation was somehow implied by Gandhi prior to Civ4. At the risk of sounding overly theoretical, blobbing concerns both conflation and omission.

Interesting enough I don't find Arabia or China personally to be on the same scale as India, considering there has always kind of been sort of unity through the various dynasties or the Medieval caliphates. Also I consider Northern Africa/Maghreb region distinct enough that there could be another civ there like we have with Morocco or another Berber civ.

In this way, I would agree Arabia is on a different scale, more regional, closer to India than Indian influence. Thank you for pointing this out. As for regional deblobbing of Arabia, India, and China, it is generally accepted politically China is not deblobbable but Arabia and India could still be represented by two or three factions each.

For Arabia, I would propose picking two from Iberia/the Maghreb and early caliphates/Islamic Egypt, with cycling among candidates.

As for India, there are many options mentioned here. Perhaps we have an Indian/Mughal split, as Yudhisthira has warned against creating a Dravidian blob, with multiple Indian leaders to diversify representation. While I am warming up to two or three leaders for a faction, having any more almost certainly constitutes a red flag. We could also have a third slot for the Indo-Greeks or more likely the Kushans.

I would also say a couple of years ago I wasn't necessary keen on splitting India either, but I've sort of come around though not as mush as others. It all comes down to opinions, and I guess most importantly what the devs feel like doing. Maybe we've given them some ideas.

It has really opened my eyes how often people put forth European candidates in particular and in aggregate. I myself am partial to postcolonial representation and certain European cultures but see how a structural change in the faction list could make a difference.

For everyone to be represented like Europe is, we would need a civ count in the hundreds.

Until and unless we get that (and I stand by the idea that it’s probably decades in the future if at all), the last thing we need is another region brought to the kind of detailed overrepresentation Europe already has. Europe is an unsustainable mistake we’re stuck with and should not repeat, not a model we should apply elsewhere.

Because the cost of doing that is other regions getting no representation at all.

If we took the East Asian four, plus up to three each for South/Southeast Asia and deblobbing India, we would have at most 10 factions (instead of the current 7). In contrast, there were twice as many Western civilizations in Civ6.

Would you be open to dedicating three slots to deblobbing India at the expense of European factions? Also, would this East/South/Southeast configuration of 10 fall under what you perceive to be European-style overrepresentation?

 

[Evie]

Am I OPEN to cutting a few European (or Colonial) spots for India? Yes. And if you can make it happen, I'd cheer for it. Even if Canada was one of them because as enjoyable as playing Canada is, I don't see having it in game as important. There are too many Eurocolonials as far as I'm concerned. We shouldn't have two scandinavians, and Poland, Hungary and other central europeans should take turns too, and Macedon should never have been split off and Byzantium really didn't need it either - both should be in the Greek (or Roman for Byz) blobs. Scotland was a waste of a slot, Georgia is a pure meme, and Brazil, Canada, Australia and Gran Colombia are pure pandering. Yes, I'd favor cuts to Europe - if I thought there was a snowball chance in hell of it happening.

Do I believe there's even a snowball chance in hell of Firaxis actually taking three existing Euro/Coloslots and giving them to India? No. Not even close. This game is a western, anglosphere game, sold primarily in western markets, where people's pop culture knowledge of history includes a bunch of second rate European countries but no conception of India before Gandhi (maybe the Taj Mahal), precolonial americas, or Subsaharan Africa are nonxexistent, where Euro-colonials are what sell, and so Euro-colonials are what stays. And no amount of disliking it on my part is foing to change that. Reducing the Eurocolonial count by more than 1 or 2 is ridiculously unlikely, and even 1 or 2...is pretty unlikely.

Hence why my focus is on how to distribute the scarce few additional civ spots we get each new game.

 

[BuchiTaton]

CIV6's civs already are highly leader based in gameplay design, uniques and audiovisual flavor. If CIV7 follow this trend each additional leader would be prety close to be a different civ.

This is why I think the easiest solution is to make India and China the priorities candidates to have second leaders in CIV7.

> INDIA
- Medieval Rajendra Chola (talking Tamil) and Contemporary Gandhi

> CHINA
- Classical Wu of Han and Modern Kangxi (talking Manchu)

Of course each one with their own uniques, bonus and agendas.Gandhi and Wu would be the base game leaders while Rajendra and Kangxi could be part of a DLC about dynasties.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

It has really opened my eyes how often people put forth European candidates in particular and in aggregate. I myself am partial to postcolonial representation and certain European cultures but see how a structural change in the faction list could make a difference.

I don't necessarily care about postcolonial nations, but I do think that we should include no more than we currently do. America and Brazil I see staying for Civ 7, with most likely Australia in Oceania unless they decide to do New Zealand. for some reason. Gran Colombia seems the most expendable and can see it rotating with Argentina and Mexico. Canada I also see staying unless they decide to choose Haiti as the "francophone" one.

As for India, there are many options mentioned here. Perhaps we have an Indian/Mughal split, as Yudhisthira has warned against creating a Dravidian blob, with multiple Indian leaders to diversify representation.

I could see Chola possibly happening, but not before the Mughals appear first.

In this way, I would agree Arabia is on a different scale, more regional, closer to India than Indian influence. Thank you for pointing this out. As for regional deblobbing of Arabia, India, and China, it is generally accepted politically China is not deblobbable but Arabia and India could still be represented by two or three factions each.

For Arabia, I would propose picking two from Iberia/the Maghreb and early caliphates/Islamic Egypt, with cycling among candidates.

Yeah they did that sort of in Civ 5 with Arabia and Morocco, which is why I thought it was strange as Morocco felt like Arabia 2.0. I'd personally like a more proper pre-Islamic Berber civ in North Africa as that hasn't been explored yet, but I can also see why people would rather two caliphates.

CIV6's civs already are highly leader based in gameplay design, uniques and audiovisual flavor. If CIV7 follow this trend each additional leader would be prety close to be a different civ.

This is why I think the easiest solution is to make India and China the priorities candidates to have second leaders in CIV7.

> INDIA
- Medieval Rajendra Chola (talking Tamil) and Contemporary Gandhi

> CHINA
- Classical Wu of Han and Modern Kangxi (talking Manchu)

Of course each one with their own uniques, bonus and agendas.Gandhi and Wu would be the base game leaders while Rajendra and Kangxi could be part of a DLC about dynasties.

I do agree that they should be the prime candidates for alternate leaders, probably even along with Arabia to represent the different dynasties if they aren't split.
Then of course you have Egypt, England, France, Germany, and Russia with centuries of different leaders, and possibly Greece, especially if Alexander goes back because you will need a city-state leader as well.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

I don't necessarily care about postcolonial nations, but I do think that we should include no more than we currently do. America and Brazil I see staying for Civ 7, with most likely Australia in Oceania unless they decide to do New Zealand. for some reason. Gran Colombia seems the most expendable and can see it rotating with Argentina and Mexico. Canada I also see staying unless they decide to choose Haiti as the "francophone" one.

I suppose I would distinguish between the colonial states of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States and a broader group of postcolonial ones including Brazil, Haiti, South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria that I would be happier seeing represented. Of course, postcolonialism offers a valid vantage point on India in its present form; however, that is also one of the reasons I am in favor of representing India at large as multiple factions, all the more if Gandhi is to remain a leader.

Yeah they did that sort of in Civ 5 with Arabia and Morocco, which is why I thought it was strange as Morocco felt like Arabia 2.0. I'd personally like a more proper pre-Islamic Berber civ in North Africa as that hasn't been explored yet, but I can also see why people would rather two caliphates.

The Civ V approach would probably work better if Arabia were more specific and if both of the two factions alternated to include more cultures. What did you have in mind for pre-Islamic Berbers, perhaps Mauretania/Numidia?

 

[Patine]

I suppose I would distinguish between the colonial states of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States and a broader group of postcolonial ones including Brazil, Haiti, South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria that I would be happier seeing represented. Of course, postcolonialism offers a valid vantage point on India in its present form; however, that is also one of the reasons I am in favor of representing India at large as multiple factions, all the more if Gandhi is to remain a leader.

I'm not sure I see how Brazil belongs moreso included with Haiti, Kenya, and Nigeria over Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, to be honest, and South Africa's position really depends on the era in it's history the leader represents.

 

[BuchiTaton]

By the way people do you know about the soon to be full unveiled India DLC for AoE2. From official hints and a credible leak the civs are like this:
- Hindustanis, former on game "Indians"
- Gurjaras, Chakram Thrower and Shrivamsha Rider
- Bengalis, Ratha
- "Dravidians", Urumi Swordman and Thirisadai

Hope "Dravidians" still could be changed to more specific Tamils, official names could change since the leak seems to be an old build.

Every time a big historical based game do something like this open the chance for others to do the same, so hope AoE2 inspire CIV7.

 

[Patine]

By the way people do you know about the soon to be full unveiled India DLC for AoE2. From official hints and a credible leak the civs are like this:
- Hindustanis, former on game "Indians"
- Gurjaras, Chakram Thrower and Shrivamsha Rider
- Bengalis, Ratha
- "Dravidians", Urumi Swordman and Thirisadai

Hope "Dravidians" still could be changed to more specific Tamils, official names could change since the leak seems to be an old build.

Every time a big historical based game do something like this open the chance for others to do the same, so hope AoE2 inspire CIV7.

Do you mean ANOTHER Indo-Centric expansion on top of Rise of the Rajas for AoE2? I'll have to check this out.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The Civ V approach would probably work better if Arabia were more specific and if both of the two factions alternated to include more cultures. What did you have in mind for pre-Islamic Berbers, perhaps Mauretania/Numidia?

Numidia would be cool. I'd even possibly settle for a generic Berber civ lead by Dihya.

I'm not sure I see how Brazil belongs moreso included with Haiti, Kenya, and Nigeria over Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, to be honest, and South Africa's position really depends on the era in it's history the leader represents.

Not being Anglocentric, is my guess.

Honestly I'd rather them stay away from African postcolonial states as much as possible, because I feel like the precolonial empires and kingdoms from those areas are much more interesting.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

I myself am partial to postcolonial representation and certain European cultures but see how a structural change in the faction list could make a difference.

I'm not sure I see how Brazil belongs moreso included with Haiti, Kenya, and Nigeria over Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, to be honest, and South Africa's position really depends on the era in it's history the leader represents.

Not being Anglocentric, is my guess.

The original intention for my comment above was to acknowledge I myself have personal preferences that do not necessarily overlap with what I think would be best for representation. If my distinction is not productive for the thread, by all means, I am sorry for bringing in the distraction!